“Should I Launch My Startup Idea?”

Honestly, no. Statistics show 90% of startups fail within the first few years. Anyone that says “YoU CAn dO iT!” is just telling you what you ‘want to hear’ not ‘need to hear’. They’re basically encouraging you to play Russian roulette, except the gun has 9 bullets and 1 blank — pretty ugly odds 💀

Personally, I would recommend applying the same time/effort into a full-time day job plus a part-time night job which together would fetch roughly ~$85,000/year, or more (depending on your age, retail or fast food, ~$20/hour, 9AM-5PM + 6PM-12PM = $280/day x 6-days per week = $1,680/week), with no risk. This is Plan A.

For real though! You could finance a pretty cool sports car (eg 2014 Mercedes CLA45 AMG @ ~$50k would be ~$300/week), then finance a decent house after 1-2 years of living with parents/family (another ~$400/week, or less if you rent out the 2nd/3rd room to friends) [NOTE: read this post about Australian real estate]. By the time you’re 25 or 30 years old, you’d be ahead of 90% of your peers because they worked less.

If you’re a sensible person, you’d agree with the above and move on with a pretty sweet life overall 🙂

“I don’t care, I’m launching this startup idea!”

What, really? Are you sure you want to do this? Okkayyy, if you say so 🤷‍♂️ In that case, I might as well share a few tips to help maximise your chance of success.

First off, congrats for being stubborn. That’s the first characteristic needed to launch a successful startup. It’ll help you disregard the haters and naysayers who are jealous you’re making the move they didn’t have the guts to. However, you need to be prepared to compromise a little, because 1-in-10 times, you’ll be wrong and must quickly adapt to the correct solution.

I’ve prepared the list below for your review. Most of these are like mind tricks you need to program into your brain to stay on track. If you can tick all the boxes, I’d say you’re ahead of 80% of the startup crowd.

Cyrus’ Startup Success Checklist:

1. Commitment: you need to COMMIT to your startup “from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do you part”, there’s no going back once you start. There may be dozens of times which you will think “this is too hard” and consider giving up — these are what I call “level ups”! Take a breather for a few hours, maybe sleep on it, and start fresh the next day where you left off 😁
2. Endurance: you need to be prepared to WORK 90% of your time awake @ 7-days a week for the first 2-3 years. Once you’re above the clouds, you can dial it down to 80% of your time awake @ 6-days a week for the next few years until you reach a successful exit (IPO, acquisition, etc). If you are unable commit to this degree of perseverance, you’d be better off with a regular day job and take it easy 😴
3. Focus: you need to ELIMINATE all distractions which are not directly related to the success of your business. I gave up all my fav hobbies, luxuries, video games, sports, etc during bulk of this period .. It was painful, but had to be done .. This era will automatically highlight your real friends, who will understand and support you during this period 💕
4. Strategy: you need to think DIFFERENT than what other companies in the industry are doing. They all have flaws. Make your business shine in the areas where they are weak. This will help you acquire market share 📈
5. Teamwork: you must build a team of SKILLED friends/family who you trust 100% and are equally committed — but be prepared for 1-2 of them to inevitably let you down. When it comes to equity, be fair/generous, but also firm/realistic. These are people you’ll be working with 20-40 years from now, so you gotta look after them 💰
6. I’ll add more items here as these come to mind!
7. Optimism: You need to be optimistic at least 90% of the time. It’s ok to be skeptical or uncertain the remaining 10%, as this will help ensure you don’t blindly go down the wrong path and assume you’re always right. It won’t be a straight path to success. There will be ups and downs along the way. Expect 3 bad things to go wrong each day, and if only 1-2 bad things happen, then the day isn’t so bad — right?
8. DAMN GOOD IDEA: arguably the most important thing in the list lol.. If you don’t have a ‘damn good idea’, you might want to stick to Plan A in the first section above.. Plan A is still a great outcome!

Anyways, don’t just take it from me. Consult others too.. If the consensus of your friends/family is a firm and supportive “YES!”, perhaps it’s worth the shot — good luck 🙂

(PS, feel free to leave a comment below if you agree/disagree, I’d be happy to hear your thoughts!)